‘The Last Man Left to Tell the Tale’: Challenging the Conciliation Master Narrative in Van Diemen’s Land

Abstract

James Gravenor, a convict servant on George Augustus Robinson’s ‘friendly mission’ to the Aboriginal Tasmanians in the early 1830s, later published a long-overlooked description of the process of ‘decoying’ Aboriginal people into captivity. This article uses Gravenor’s testimony to explore this ‘decoy’ phenomenon, resituating Aboriginal Tasmanians in the wider processes of capture during the ‘friendly mission’ expeditions. By reflecting on Gravenor’s relationship with historical narratives formulated during his lifetime, and his subsequent neglect by scholars, this article also offers a critique and reassessment of a ‘master narrative’ of Tasmanian frontier history that largely derived from and survived well beyond the 1870s.